[CEO Update] Embracing Sustainable Change

I would like to start by saying thank you to everyone for their kind comments and engagement with my last blog.

Since then, we have held six more meetings of the PCC Inclusion Council and taken another big step in embedding a positive, inclusive culture within our business with the introduction of a new Reverse Mentoring Programme. I am delighted personally to be taking part in it, and look forward to having my first meeting with my mentor in the coming weeks.

In this second blog, I’d like to talk to you about sustainability. It’s a topic which comes up whenever I visit one of our sites and speak to my colleagues. Our people aren’t just turning up and doing their jobs – they are all actually thinking about how their workplace will impact on the environment. We wanted to take this energy and enthusiasm and turn them into something measurable.

In that way, our sustainability goals are driven by our people. When we first started discussing the targets we would set for ourselves, it was suggested that we devise an ambition to transform our company by 2050. Much to the surprise of the team that proposed it, I rejected it. This wasn’t soon enough. I don’t want to disappoint anyone, but I really don’t expect to be leading this company in 29 years’ time! It would have been easy for me to agree to such a lengthy timescale because I wouldn’t be the one driving it through, and right now is the time to take action.

Our new Sustainability Ambition outlines our commitment to deliver the lasting changes our planet and societies need. This work has been led by our Head of Sustainability, Lucy Klinkenberg-Matthews, who has great knowledge and an infectious passion that helps drive a true collaboration between our people, clients and supply chain partners.

To tackle these challenges, we have aligned the PCC Sustainability Ambition to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and instead of aiming for 2050, we want to take really significant strides over the next nine years. We have used the UN goals to help develop our roadmap and categorised our initiatives into three pillars of People, Planet, and Partners.

We have already made significant strides. We have achieved EcoVadis Platinum status, placing us in the top 1% of the 75,000 companies they assess annually. We have also reduced scope one and two carbon emissions by 3%, and we now source around 35,000 tonnes of paper from sustainably managed forests every year. And to help our clients make more informed choices, we have developed a carbon calculator to provide them with the lifecycle footprint of our products and services.

But sustainability is not just about carbon footprint. As a business, every year we add over ￡418m into local economies and employ around 75 new apprentices across 26 different courses. ?

These achievements are just the initial steps on a long journey, and our Sustainability Ambition has big, bold commitments. For many of these, there are clearly defined roadmaps; for others the path is not yet clear. So, between now and 2025, we will dedicate time to effectively defining, measuring and benchmarking our performance across all areas to define longer term objectives and programmes that will form the stepping stones to achieving our ambition.

We have made a commitment to publish an interim roadmap update every six months, along with an annual report that will be a fully transparent story of our progress. I would like to thank Lucy for her leadership in this area. But in addition, I would like to thank everyone who has been involved so far, and we look forward to driving the ambition forward as a team. It makes me tremendously proud that this work is being driven by our whole company.

Thank you.

Jeremy Walters.